


And Not Be Moved By You

by LDhenson



Category: Hot Fuzz (2007)
Genre: First Kiss, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-22
Updated: 2019-03-22
Packaged: 2019-11-27 08:36:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18192254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LDhenson/pseuds/LDhenson
Summary: Because sometimes with Danny, it isn't really about words.





	1. It's like a hazily-familiar tune.

**Author's Note:**

> First posted to LJ in May 2007.

There are those days in Sandford that even a Cornetto, albeit a semi-melted one, can neither cool down nor liven up. This is one of them: sitting in the car with Danny at a speed-trap at the height of summer, windows open to catch the faint grass-scented breeze, a long slow afternoon.

Real life isn't always like the movies.

'No thanks, you go on ahead,' he said earlier, not wanting to attempt juggling both cone and steering wheel through the village streets; but Danny's bought two anyway, declaring they can well wait until the car's stopped. The Cornettos don't appear to share in this optimism, having turned themselves mushy in the hot air in silent protest.

'Thirty-nine.'

'... _I'd_ like to drive a white car,' Danny's saying.

'You _do_ drive a white car.'

'I don't mean with blues and twos on top.' Danny's tongue curls around his ice cream, so that his next words come out garbled. 'I mean something...low and fancy and mmhhpphh, like Don Johnson. Mmmphh.'

'What?'

'I said, "Thirty-eight".'

Thirty-eight. Angel takes a reflective bite of his own Cornetto, letting the coolness pool at the back of his throat. Thirty-eight isn't even near to the one potential spot of excitement they might have today, the sleek white car that's been reported racing down the roads on the outskirts of Sandford twice in the past four days. It's what they're waiting for, although at this point he'll take even fugitive waterfowl over sitting here motionless in this swelter.

'Don Johnson?' Angel asks, although he's not entirely sure he wants to know. Even after a year the list appears to be well inexhaustible, and already he's had to file away the vast array of characters and films in their own mental compartment as complex as any for perpetrators and cases.

But then Danny grins, and Angel can't bring himself to mind. 'Sonny Crockett? _Miami Vice_?' At Angel's blank look, he continues, 'He's undercover all the time, see, with drug lords and mob kingpins and the like, so he's got this car. Well - not just any car - it's a _Testarossa_ , and it's got these _vents_ all on the side, and...' 

Angel half-tunes out the lengthy treatise on the Testarossa's technical wonders, settling back into the seat, content to keep one eye on the road and the other on his partner. Lets the rise and fall of breathless words wash over him, like a hazily-familiar tune in counterpoint to the distant hum of bees in the meadow, because sometimes with Danny, it isn't really about words.

'...used to have a black one, but it...'

Because sometimes with Danny, a tiny, nearly-unacknowledged part of him is obliged to admit, it's really about - well, _Danny_.

'...and then they blew up the...'

Danny beside him, gleefully recounting the details of cinematic explosion. Danny with new Sergeant's stripes gleaming on his shoulder.

'...shoulda seen it, Crockett said...'

Danny with his gaze focused, despite even the marvels of fighting organized crime in southern Florida, on the digital readout because police work is not _all_ about proper action and shit.

Danny taking another bite and missing a chocolate flake that lingers at the corner of his mouth. 

Before he's fully aware what he's doing, he's reached across the seats and stopped the bit of chocolate from slipping any further with the back of one finger.

'Careful there...' he says, and then his voice catches hard in his throat as Danny's tongue flicks out to scoop up the wayward piece, sweeping just for a second wet and shockingly warm over his skin.

'Thanks,' Danny beams at him, all innocence.

Angel belatedly pulls his hand back, blinking; a flush of heat that has nothing to do with the summer air slams up into his cheeks.

'Now do yours!' Danny insists.

Angel stares at him. ' _What?_ '

Danny nods helpfully at Angel's own forgotten ice cream, melted vanilla already starting to ooze over his fingers. Stifling a curse, Angel makes half an instinctive move towards lapping up the spill before decorum kicks in and he snatches up the paper serviette from his knee instead, mopping up the overflow. 

As he crumples the sodden paper into a ball so it won't drip onto the upholstery, his fingers now clean, he catches out of the corner of his eye an unidentifiable glimmer that flashes across Danny's expression. 

Danny's an open book: whatever it was was so fleeting, he doubts Danny's even registered it consciously. Angel opens his mouth, but before the words can form in his mind a flashy white Jaguar careens down the road before them, seventy-seven in a forty zone, and what he _says_ is, 'Fire up the roof.' It's only as he's throwing the vehicle into gear, calculating the distance to the other car, steering with one hand and disposing of the ice cream with the other that he manages to put a name to the expression: disappointment, or something very much like it.

Now is not the time: not with the chase and Danny practically hanging out the window in excitement and his own heartbeat accelerating with what might be the thrill of pursuit, or might be something else entirely. 

But maybe he'll ask Danny for Cornettos again tomorrow.


	2. How can I stand here with you, and not be moved by you?

_Things are ever so slightly soft around the edges; another drink or two and the softness will become treacherous, like quicksand. Even now he feels himself hovering on the brink of it, looking down upon the quick-sliding slope into melancholy. But for the time being the world around him is pleasantly blurred, the knife-sharp corners that perpetually lurk at the borders of his perception temporarily blunted._

_Night has eased the worst of the early July heat. The doors of the City Arms click shut behind them, and he takes a second to adjust his sight from the mellow light of the pub to the dim yellow glow of the street-lamps._

 

He's chosen the most difficult kata he knows, pushing himself, letting his mind focus on the set of moves and on his own body and not at all, not at _all_ , on what happened last night.

Rotating his forearms, he executes an open-handed wedge block, slowing as the move proceeds, tightening his muscles as he brings his hands back toward his shoulders.

 

_He draws in a deep breath of the night air. It's strange that, even after a year, once in a long while he's still vaguely surprised to find that it isn't filled with the smell of petrol and exhaust and asphalt. The heavens are clear, in a way they never would be in London; amongst the generous dusting of stars the zigzag shape of Cassiopeia glitters high in the sky, almost directly overhead._

_Danny follows his gaze upwards, uncannily fixing upon the same constellation; grins and holds up his fingers briefly in an echoing 'W'._

 

The walls are close in here, in the tiny spare room of his cottage where he unrolls his tatami mat once or twice a week in order to keep himself in practice. It's nothing like the proper facilities at Hendon, but he's learned to make do; and on other days, the size of the room is only a vague inconvenience. 

Today, it feels uncomfortably like he's attempted to retreat to someplace small.

He shifts his weight forward and stabs both hands downwards, forming fists, left hand finishing at the base of his ribs.

 

_From back of them, there's the sound of the remaining patrons exiting the pub in more or less upright fashion._

_'...like something dredged three days old out of a swamp.'_

_'All right, Andy, it's just bolognese.'_

_'I don't care,' Cartwright mutters, sounding remarkably like he's sulking. 'I fucking wish you'd stop ordering it.'_

_Danny snickers quietly; the exchange between the Andys would sound nearly vicious if it weren't for the fact that the entire squad has been hearing it for months, a sort of recurring mild disgruntlement, devoid of any real venom. It's one of the rare occasions Angel has seen the two of them even come close to open disagreement._

_Not for the first time he finds himself wondering about it, the ability to coexist in that kind of non-conflict, although he knows all too well that lack of open disagreement and actual agreement are far from being the same thing._

_('Two people involved, distinct signs of a struggle, a complete mess.'_

_'You_ are _talking about here?')_

 

Left leg forward, set, left hand mid-level inside block. 

Right leg forward, right hand mid-level lunge punch.

 

_He knows why he's thinking about her, today of all days, after all this time. It's her birthday, although another hour more and it won't be. Not that it...not that it matters, in any practical sense: he wasn't there for the last three, either._

_Last year this day passed him by, but last year this day meant hospital visits and PT and falling asleep, exhausted, in bedside chairs._

_Danny's fingers curl warmly round the back of his neck as they turn the corner. The side-street is still, the two of them having lost their fellow pub-goers to a chorus of 'Night, sir's a couple of corners ago._

 

Same sequence of moves, reversed sides.

 

_Her. Janine. Fierce and passionate one minute, cool and clinical the next._

_Not unlike himself. Although in his case it was with perhaps - because hindsight is sometimes not so much sharp as it is_ cutting _\- less of the passionate and rather too much more of the clinical._

_'I like them yellow ones,' Danny says._

_He realises with a start that Danny's been speaking all along, that familiar rise and fall again, though for the life of him he can't recall the actual words._

_'These ones here,' Danny continues, hand sliding from Angel's neck to gesture at the creamy yellow bell-shaped blossoms twining up and around the white rail fence. Night air rushes in to fill the void and Angel ruthlessly suppresses the unexpected urge to shiver. His brain replays the last few distracted minutes, provides him with the workable supposition that Danny's been commenting on the front lawns of the citizenry as they go by. 'What d'you think they are?'_

_He squints for a moment at the pendent, four-petaled flowers. 'Probably clematis.' He shrugs. '_ Clematis chiisanensis, _used in gardens for climbing.'_

_Danny makes a noise of skepticism. 'I don't think I could climb on that,' he says, and Angel shoots him a startled look before Danny's grin slips out._

_From the corner of his eye, he watches Danny touch one of the petals gently as they continue on their way._

 

He looks over his left shoulder, steps back and shifts his weight, feeling the slight give of tatami underfoot as he does so. A scooping block with the right hand, and at the same time an upper-level block with the left, two different simultaneous forms of defence, one to either side.

 

_He wonders, without any bitterness, if Dave is the one with her today. The one who isn't called away on a theft ring bust or to man an emergency roadblock or to put down a drug dealer with a Kalashnikov._

_'That's the one I were telling you about,' Danny says. He's leaning over a small neat gate, peering into the shadows beside the front steps. 'Mr Diller's new garden gnome.'_

_Or if perhaps she's even changed her mind about Bob._

_'Ugly little bugger, isn't he?' Danny continues._

_'Hm.'_

_He knew about Dave, or at least a placeholder for Dave, days before she even said it. The swiftness with which his sense of betrayal had been crushed by stoic resignation should have been a sign; but at the time he only hung onto that resignation, taking some kind of refuge in the fact that, for whatever reason, he didn't have to_ feel _._

_'He's got an accordion, see?'_

_'Hm.'_

_'And awful green trousers.'_

_'Hm.'_

_'I think they could've left out the rabid monkey, though.'_

_'Hm -_ what? _'_

_Danny sighs, half-turns to look back at him. 'You've not been listening to a word I've said, have you?'_

_Angel stares at the gnome for a moment: it does have an accordion, and green trousers, and is indeed quite the ugly bugger. A rabid monkey would probably have been an improvement. 'No.' He meets Danny's gaze. 'Sorry.'_

_'It's okay,' Danny tells him, and the remarkable thing, Angel knows, is that he means it._

 

He looks over his right shoulder, steps forward, turning his body with the movement. Left hand up, right hand blurring in a rising inside block. Takes another step forward, throws a mid-level lunge punch with his left hand.

 

_And then Danny's hand slides round the back of Angel's neck again as they walk on, Danny's thumb just grazing his skin the way it did those petals, and he stops thinking about her._

 

He didn't know what to make of that. He still doesn't. He didn't have to read into it like that: a touch is a touch, and too many drinks is too many drinks.

He executes the crescent kick perhaps a little more forcefully than necessary, steps back and swings out both arms sharply in a double lower level block. 

 

_'You're not still thinking about them punks in that Jag from yesterday, are you?' Danny asks._

_'No.'_

_'Something new happening?'_

_'No. Not really.'_

_Danny exhales and stops walking, and inwardly Angel tenses, knowing that in terms of logical progression the next question will be some variant of_ Well, what's going on inside that big melon, then? _and he isn't about to answer._

_'I've been giving it a lot of thought,' Danny tells him, utterly solemn. His gaze flicks appraisingly over Angel. 'And I think...I think that what your garden really needs is a rabid monkey gnome.'_

_Caught off-guard, he's laughing before he can stop himself, though whether it's from the joke or simply out of relief, he can't be sure. In the first-floor window above them, lights go on and shutters are flung open and old Mrs Candler's gravelly voice calls out: 'What's all this racket, now, and on a Wednesday night! Do you have any idea what time it - oh. Is that you down there, officers?'_

_'Yes, ma'am,' Angel tells her. 'Eleven twenty-seven and all's well, ma'am.'_

_'Oh. Good,' she says, mollified. 'Thank you, Inspector.' And the shutters close, and Angel grabs Danny's arm and hurries them both onto the next street as fast as dignity will allow._

 

Double close jab punch, snap both arms back to their original positions. He shifts his right leg back, brings his left hand up in a rising block, then deliberately launches himself into the kata's most difficult move, a three-hundred sixty degree spin jump -

 

_By the time they fetch up against a niche in the brick wall of the first in a small row of flats, honeysuckle vines dangling above, they're stifling giggles, trying to converse in whispers._

_'Thought Widow Candler'd have our heads off for sure,' Danny says._

_'Keep your voice down.'_

_'Did I ever tell you about the time Fran's boy Jack got pissed and went in her rose bushes, and she chucked an antique wash-basin at him?'_

_'No,' Angel says._

_'Well, he got pissed, see, and he went in her rose bushes...'_

_'...and she chucked an antique wash-basin at him?'_

_'Yeah!' Danny beams. 'How'd you know?'_

_'Shh,' Angel splutters, fully aware that he's not at all succeeding at keeping his voice stern. 'Don't_ do _that.'_

_He's also abruptly aware that he's practically got his nose in Danny's ear, summer night and honeysuckle swirling around the two of them, and that he feels no particular urge to pull away. An instant later, it hits him: neither does Danny._

_Him. Danny. Gunfights and car chases one minute, unpredictably perceptive and damnably patient the next._

_So he lets himself go, just for the moment, and leans forward to brush his lips over Danny's ear._

_Danny's gone very still, and Angel realises his partner is holding his breath; not apprehensive, only waiting. Angel moves closer, stops thinking, stops thinking, allows his lips to linger on Danny's cheek, closes his eyes._

_He can feel Danny's hand on his stomach, not pushing him away, just a gentle weight. The warnings of rules and regulations and deep primal uncertainty are shrieking in his ears, but he shoves them aside, wills his and Danny's mingled breathing to be the only thing he hears. He finds the corner of Danny's mouth, a little too rushed, lowers his head -_

_The flash of headlights and the crunch of tyres slaps him into reality once more and he staggers back, ears full of warnings again, not the least of which is his own head telling him he has absolutely no idea what he's doing, and Inspector Nicholas Angel never acts on anything without knowing explicitly what it is that he's doing._

_'I'm - I apologise,' he stammers._

_'Nicholas,' Danny starts, but Angel's unable to meet his eyes._

_'I think we should say good night,' he states through gritted teeth, and before the sentence is even finished he's turning and striding quickly away down the street._

 

\- and lands hard and off-balance, staggering to one knee. He smacks a fist in frustration down onto the woven mat, sweat stinging his eyes, chest heaving with the exertion.

God damn it. God _damn_ it.

In the end, however, it's training and discipline that win out, and he shifts to kneel properly on both knees, hands clenched loosely at his sides, holding himself still.


	3. Because sometimes with Danny, it isn't really about words.

His watch tells him it's nine forty-three p.m. The deep ache in his back muscles and the cramp in his fingers, clamped a little too tightly around the biro, tell him that six hours is too long to spend hunched over his desk, trying to lose himself in paperwork.

He raises his head, gazes through his office window into the darkened squadroom. At this hour, he's the only one in the entire building, save for Sergeant Turner at the front desk. Either of the Turners is content to spend his shift with his nose buried in a novel; it's a useful fact to know, especially if one is counting on remaining undisturbed in one's office behind a discreetly locked door.

But the forms and lines and tick boxes are starting to blur together in his vision, and it's only after he misspells the name 'Kennit' three times running that he has to admit this is getting pointless; and more important, if he keeps this up he'll be of no use to the team tomorrow. He gives himself half a moment to simply sit with his elbows atop the description of the white Jag and the heels of his palms pressed to his temples, the throbbing behind them not easing at all, before he resolutely gets to his feet.

The fluorescent lights flicker briefly before subsiding to a steady, almost subliminal hum. The station is less than ten months new, but already the locker-room looks as though it might as well have been transplanted wholesale from the old one, rigid standards of orderliness fighting a daily losing battle with the team's long-ingrained collective habits. Only the room's slightly larger size and the sleeker locker doors give the location away.

He resists the temptation to lean his forehead against the cool metal, yanks open his door instead and strips off his stab vest. Gets as far as loosening his tie and the top two buttons of his collar before he consciously has to still the restlessness thrumming through his body, the urge to move, to pace, to _do_ something.

'There's nothing to be done,' he mutters aloud.

'But there's always something can be tried,' comes a quiet voice behind him, and he spins to see Danny in the doorway.

'Haven't hardly seen you these last two days,' Danny continues, stepping into the room. He's in civilian clothes, pale blue cotton knit shirt in stark contrast to Angel's crisp whites.

Angel fixes his gaze on a point just above Danny's left shoulder. 'There was a significant volume of new paperwork to be processed,' he says evenly. 'That white Jaguar we chased down - '

'Was four days ago.'

He tightens his fingers around the latch, keeps his voice level. 'A fax came through from the Met this evening. They believe there's a possibility the vehicle and its driver and/or passengers are connected with a suspected ring of drug runners operating out of North London.'

Ordinarily, simple mention of a high-profile case like this should have been enough to divert Danny's attention. But there's nothing at all ordinary about this, and Danny only nods shortly. 'And now?'

'I'm currently awaiting more details from the Central Task Force.'

'Then we've time to talk, haven't we?'

Angel turns away, tugs off his tie with a controlled movement. 'There's nothing to discuss.'

'But Wednesday night - '

'Was entirely my responsibility.'

'It weren't!'

'It was improper conduct on my part as a superior officer. I was unpardonably drunk.'

Danny's eyes narrow. 'You knew the name of them flowers when I asked you,' he counters.

'The mere identification of a flower is not indicative of - '

'In _Latin._ '

Angel swings his locker door closed in one sharp motion, not bothering to finish changing. 'I'm sorry,' he says, his tone stiff, face expressionless. 'I have nothing more to say.'

He makes to push past Danny, abruptly finds himself pushed back, his wrists pinned against the lockers at either side of his waist.

He's forgotten, or perhaps never really thought about, how strong Danny is. Angel can't pull free just by muscle alone, although training tells him there are a number of likely methods: he can twist his forearms to put pressure on Danny's thumbs, or he can bring his knee up sharply into groin or gut, or he can lunge forward to smash head against head.

Angel knows all this, and he's sure Danny knows it, too: that there are many ways out of this situation, and that he isn't taking them. 

' _Talk to me,_ ' Danny fairly growls.

'Sergeant Butterman, I insist - '

'To _me_. _Danny_.'

He clenches his jaw, stares into the middle distance, a skill he's perfected during too many too-long visits with superior officers. 'I haven't any excuses.'

'I don't want an excuse.' Danny deliberately shifts sideways into his line of vision, his voice softer now, almost pleading. Angel realises with a pang of guilt that he's been waiting for just that to happen, waiting for that break, knowing that Danny's anger against him can't hold out long. 'I want a reason.'

He opens his mouth, shuts it again with a swift, mute shake of his head, vocal cords frozen.

'Just _tell_ me.'

Angel averts his gaze; the admission escapes in a whispered rush. 'I don't know how.'

It falls, like an ominous roll of distant thunder, into the silence between them. Danny closes his eyes, and when he opens them again they're undefinably dark. 'Then show me.'

And then Angel looks at him, really _looks_ at him, for what seems like the first time in a longer time than he can remember; despite the initial disapproving evaluation, the more recent surreptitious glances, all the countless hours spent with Danny by his side in between. Danny with his jaw set now, his gaze steady, determined. Because the truth is this, and Angel's known it all along, despite his attempts to evade it like everyone else has evaded it: Danny isn't stupid. Danny's a lot of things - impulsive, over-trusting, generous to a fault - but he isn't stupid, least of all in matters where Angel is concerned.

And what Angel can't acknowledge or even perceive about himself, he'll have to believe that Danny _can_.

So he lets himself go, just for another moment, riding not on his own certainty but on Danny's, and leans forward to meet his partner's lips in a kiss.

A real kiss this time, no awkward fumbling like before. He lets his mouth open, tastes warmth and urgency and the lingering sweetness of ice cream; and when Danny's knee slides between his legs it feels so natural, so _right_ , that by the time he draws back in delayed surprise Danny's already pressed so close Angel has neither the leverage nor the space to pull away.

'Danny - ' he starts, but Danny rolls his thigh in a gentle, tantalising motion, and the rest of Angel's sentence is lost in a groan. He stifles it against Danny's shoulder, nearly biting into pale blue fabric as Danny moves a second time, a third time, more purposefully now.

Danny's answering hardness against the top of his leg is a shock, but at the same time achingly familiar; and it means that this is real, not just some hazy drunken misjudgement. But more than that, it means Danny wants this, too, which is what matters most of all.

The grip on his wrists is still tight, the cold hard metal of the lockers beneath his fists completely unlike the living steel of Danny's fingers. He knows he can tell Danny to let go, to stop, and Danny would obey before the next heartbeat; but Angel says nothing, squeezes his eyes shut, teeth clenched around the fabric of Danny's shirt. Above the waves of sensation and the thudding of his own pulse he hears the hollow, metallic thump of the locker doors taking the impact - sixth time, seventh time -

'Nicholas,' Danny breathes hotly in his ear, and Angel gasps.

He's no longer thinking about the forearm-twist, the knee-strike, the head-butt. He's pulling against restraint by nothing other than sheer instinct now, all to no avail, but at the same time he's thrusting forward into that unyielding pressure again and again, inexorable ebb and flow, his body moving of its own accord.

The rhythm builds to a fever pitch; Danny presses upward firmly with his thigh, and Angel rises desperately onto his toes but there's nowhere to go and he comes hard, bucking helplessly against Danny's hip. White sparks fly across his vision and it's as though the entire world slams up tight around him, and then slowly, very slowly, falls away.

It takes him a moment before it registers that his wrists have been released, and Danny's palms are sweeping gently up and down his sides, soothing away the last of the tremors. The remainder of the building, aside from their shared ragged breathing, is completely silent.

'I'm sorry,' Danny murmurs, suddenly sounding terribly unsure, and something deep in Angel's chest tightens.

'You shouldn't be.' He doesn't lift his head; the sight of the wall opposite is about all that he can handle right this instant. There's so much more than that, but the words won't come so soon, and he hopes Danny understands this much for now: what he couldn't say, what he still can't say. He steadies his voice, repeats it. 'You shouldn't be.'

After a long moment, Danny nods. 'I...think you'll have to change your trousers before you go.' 

'Before _we_ go.'

'Before we go,' Danny says then, the last of his tension slipping away.

'I don't think I can move.' And indeed a delicious lassitude is seeping along his veins, flowing through every muscle like heady wine; only there's no quicksand pit of melancholy at the bottom this time, just ground possibly more stable than he can ever remember standing upon. It's all he can do to return the embrace, sliding his arms around Danny's broad shoulders. 'Danny?'

'Mmm?'

'I never thought...' He coughs, tries again. 'Wherever did you...You can't tell me you learned _that_ from watching your films?'

Danny's amused breath huffs softly against the side of his throat. 'Real life isn't always like the movies, you know.'


End file.
